Eurochocolate

After some idle searching online last weekend, trying to figure out what to do with my free day, I stumbled upon a most miraculous discovery: Eurochocolate. The international festival of chocolate was going on in Perugia, no more than twenty minutes and €5 away. I was ridiculously excited- I ran upstairs to K2’s room and announced that we were going, and that was all there was to it. Unfortunately, the rest of our group caught wind of our plan that night at dinner, and I became an unwitting tour guide to ten of us. We left early in the morning, purposely not waiting for the late-sleepers, and caught the bus down to the train station in Santa Maria degli Angeli. There was momentary panic when the ticket office was closed until 1PM, but we soon found the coffee shop in the train station, where you could also buy local tickets. We’d all just gotten our tickets when the train pulled up- after another brief panic during our ride when we realized we were in the region of Perugia, so that every stop was marked “Perugia”, we managed to find the right stop. It was the one everyone got off at. Then we had to walk up the hill to the historic center of town, which turned out to be very long, very uphill, and disconcertingly empty. Right when we were beginning to doubt the very existence of the chocolate festival, we rounded a curve to the “pedestrian ascension” (that was my best translation of the sign) and were met by hundreds and hundreds of people piling off buses and smashing onto a narrow escalator that lead up, directly into the hill. We followed, all our excitement regained, and squeezed onto the escalator. As we found out, Perugia has a large area of ancient buildings that are now completely underground: this is, technically, historic downtown. Once we got to the top, we followed the crowd through underground streets, in and out of the buildings that held exhibits of chocolate from different countries and regions, then to exhibits of wines and olive oils and breads, all boasting many regional specialties only found here, and of course, paired with chocolate. As amazing as the underground city was, I don’t think I could’ve spent more than an hour stuck in the crowds without becoming extremely claustrophobic. We made it to the end of the main street, and began another long escalator ride to the surface. The surface main street, although at least in the open air, was also packed twice as full with people than was the underground city: this was the commercial vendor section, where you could buy chocolate from almost any chocolate company in Europe, and certainly any from Italy. There were booths for Italian hot chocolate (which is what an American would liken to half-set pudding) in any flavor and darkness you desire (I recommend dark chocolate and rum); there were many booths for Perugina, Lindt, and Toblerone; and what seemed like a hundred other small artisan chocolate companies, selling chocolate bars with Highland Whiskey and hot peppers, or black currant and tea. We bumped into a man dressed as a giant chocolate ravioli, who gave us cards and directed us towards the theater for free samples- a chocolate demonstration was going on inside the theater, the chef babbling in fast Italian as he made chocolate truffle molds and tempered dark chocolate. We found the table handing out a chocolate ravioli to anyone with a card from the ravioli man- it was served with dark chocolate and white chocolate sauce, atop a tiny cube of yellow cake, and was filled with Gianduja (a European staple, chocolate made with 30% hazelnut paste). Inside the theater were the really expensive chocolate companies, the ones who made things like chocolate ravioli, and chocolate dessert sushi, and chocolate cordials filled with expensive wines and tartufo (the mushroom kind of truffle). I could’ve spent $100 on just a sampling of that room. After our rendezvous with the ravioli man, we began to explore the possibility of other free samples: we had each purchased a “chococard”, a basic guide and map of the festival that also gave you discounts at most of the booths, and included free samples from certain places, if you could hunt them down. Having the card that got you the free sample was one thing, but actually getting to the booth giving out the free sample was something completely different. Italians don’t do orderly lines, even when there’s no hurry whatsoever. When free chocolate is at stake, and there’s a possibility of them running out, Italians will do whatever it takes to be at the front of the line. Booths began giving out the chococard samples at certain times: if you were lucky enough to be in front when they opened, you had a chance of surviving with your dignity. If not, it was a free-for-all, and you had to elbow your way through the crowd, holding tightly to your bag and trying to keep people from cutting around you, without getting yourself squashed or elbowed in the eye. Once you got to the front and had your sample in hand (a large chocolate bar, or a tiny bottle of coffee liquor), you were so packed in that there was no hope of getting out. People were happy to take your place, but not so happy to try to move over to let you out- this is where strong elbows and an abandonment of all personal space came in handy. At one point, I think I could’ve actually lifted both feet off the ground and still remained in place- that is, if someone had not been standing on my toes. After about four hours of wandering and crowd-fighting, we were all worn out and wanted to be away from people, and were ready to forget about whatever places we had yet to see. We managed to hit every place with chococard samples, and came home with three chocolate bars (one of them a chocolate road map of Perugia), a bottle of coffee liquor, a small bag full of mini dark chocolate bars, a cup of hot chocolate, a cordial cherry, a Lindt truffle, and a small envelope of chocolate-scented bath bubbles. We also all went home with a new appreciation of the quiet, polite uneventfulness of Assisi. The crowds where worth it for the chocolate, but both are things that should be taken only in small doses.

Santa Maria degli Angeli

Today K2 (the inseparable Kayla & Kelcey) and I took the bus down into the valley to Santa Maria degli Angeli, the town directly below Assisi. This is where the actual industry and residential population of Assisi lives, because it’s virtually impossible to expand immediately outside the city walls. The town includes such practical things as grocery stores, gas stations, schools, and the train station, which simply don’t have room in Assisi proper. Santa Maria does have its own namesake attraction as well, however: the Basilica di Santa Maria. This basilica, in sheer size, puts the one of St. Francis to shame. The centerpiece of the basilica is the small church that St. Francis restored and started his order of monks in- the little stone church sits dwarfed in the center room of the basilica, as if it were carefully plucked from its original foundation and housed in this huge shell for safekeeping. Next to it is the Transito, an even smaller stone infirmary hut, this one looking more like the huge building was built around it as it sat there immovable.  This was where St. Francis himself died, and it is now surrounded by red velvet ropes that are ignored by the tourists pressing in, peering through the door and trying to take undercover photos with their cell phones or pocket cameras (use of both is forbidden in the basilica). I try to be respectful as I walk around the huge rooms and past the small stone buildings, as there are just as many praying nuns and pilgrims here as there were at St. Francis’. Here, however, there are wads of tour group taking up the main walkways, congealing around the most impressive frescoes, talking in loud multilingual whispers. As a group, they don’t seem to watch where they are going, and if you don’t get out of their way, you will be bumped and jostled along with them, and probably forced to take someone’s picture. The nuns simply ignore the tour groups, and the tour groups seem to be afraid of the nuns, so it’s as if they live in separate levels of the same reality- watching a nun walk through a tour group is like watching the red sea part.

The high point of my day was lunch- you’d never guess it, since the three of us had about €10 between us, but we spent it oh so well.  We went to a grocery store and came out with a loaf of yesterday’s ciabatta (€1.07), a container of fresh mozzarella balls (€2.29), a package of salami (€3), and best of all, a small cup of pesto (€2.38). We found a nice bench big enough for the food and all of us to sit on, and laid out a picnic. We finished all the food, feeling pleasantly stuffed by the last bites. Everything went together perfectly. I have been craving more pesto ever since.

Streets and Saints

Assisi is a white stone city perched precariously on a hillside. The only thing keeping it from sliding down is the wall around it, which holds all the buildings and church steeples tightly together, like the rubber bands you get around bunches of asparagus at the grocery store. The city looks simple on a map: it is long and skinny, neatly outlined by the wall, and has strangely few streets. Two-dimensional maps are highly deceiving, though, and the area has far more city in it than it appears. At the same time, the city itself seems to defy basic laws of space, so that without making more than one turn, you can often end up back where you started. You can climb until you are out of breath, and then with barely a downward slope find yourself back on a lower level, or you’ll end up on a bridge over the road you just walked on, when you could’ve sworn you hadn’t taken a single ascending step.  I’m sure there’s at least one Escher’s stairway that you can climb (or descend) forever without actually changing altitude.  In the early mornings, the city appears to float in it’s own cloud, the valley below completely covered in fog that rises slowly through the streets as the sun begins warming everything up. There are some shadowy alleys that stay dark and misty all day, because they tunnel under houses or through the castle walls. 

Our first visit once we arrived was to the Basilica of St. Francis: it is a huge stately church made of white stone, sitting grandly at the end of the city where all the roads meet. The inside is no less grand. Every section of ceiling, every apse, every pillar is painted in bright frescos by one or another famous artist of the time. All this rich decoration for a saint who gave up his wealth and worldly possessions to aid the poor. That is only the main cathedral, though, and below it is a smaller church much more suiting to the saint’s character. In the lower church it is hushed and dark, and lines of pilgrims file solemnly into the basement (two levels under the grand cathedral now) to St. Francis’ tomb. There you can almost feel the weight of the whole Basilica on top of you- the ceilings are low, the lights dim and torch-like, and nuns and tourists alike pray on their knees in front of the stone crypt, eyes closed, lips moving silently. One cannot help but feel the awe and reverence of the place. People have left photos and notes in the niches of the rough stone. There are pictures of children, of old women, and many soldiers. Notes are folded neatly, some with rosaries wrapped around them. A silver necklace with a wooden cross on it hangs from a crack between stones. Even after we leave, it is hard to shake off that feeling of so many silent prayers.

Venezia

It is very easy to get lost in Venice. Not only is the city filled with tiny, person-width streets that follow no particular grid or pattern, but every street is also lined with the same permutation of shops: Venetian mask shop, restaurant, pastry shop, gift shop, glass shop, more Venetian masks. “Didn’t we just pass the shop with the purple half-moon mask in the front window?” “Yes, but I’m sure that one was next to the pastry shop with the giant meringues, so this must be a different one.” “… So how long before we give up and buy a map?” So the conversation went, several times over. When we first arrived to the island by train, we followed our guide on a not-so-direct path to San Marco square, via the Rialto bridge (a bridge with three rows of shops- rather strange, but I guess you make use of whatever space you can here). For a while I foolishly attempted to remember how to get back the way we’d come, so that I could find all the shops I’d wanted to stop at- completely hopeless after about a half-hour of walking, doubling back, looping, and following official and not-so-official signs. Actual signs pointing us towards San Marco Square were often ambiguous and frustratingly few, but the locals seem to have realized this long ago: where real signs failed, there was scrawled graffiti with arrows directing us from walls, doorways, and sometimes the ground.
When we finally reached the square, most of it had already sunk. That is to say, the tide had beat us there, and what would’ve been a large, beautiful square was a large puddle, with a long line of people crammed onto a catwalk stretching past the cathedral, around the square, and back to another narrow street. There were also catwalks through the cathedral, but the line for them was lengthy and stagnant, so we opted for a quick pass through back to the regular roads. Venice seems to love elaborate clocks: we had passed by several impressive ones on our winding walk, and now we passed underneath a beautiful clock tower, with a clock face of blue and gold, and greened copper bells surrounded by statued hammerers (I may have made both of those words up).  We wound down more streets until we stopped for lunch, settling for a simple sandwich shop with cheap (but delicious) calzones. I had a cappuccino afterwards, which was the best coffee I’ve had thus far, and came with a little square chocolate on the saucer (for the same price as a normal cappuccino! I love Venice!). After that, Kayla, Kelcey and I did what most guides suggested as the top thing to do while in Venice: we got lost. We originally headed back the way we came, stopping at what seemed like every other shop to ogle Venetian masks or shelves of confections, but after confusing one or two turns, we simply gave up keeping track of where we were and wandered aimlessly, following the general crowd of tourists unless something particular caught our eye. This is how we spent several hours of the afternoon, in and out of shops, down long alleyways that ended in canals, in and out of silent churches, through markets and over bridges. We eventually ended up at a bookshop, out of the way of the beaten path of tourists, in a small courtyard off a smaller street. All the books in the entire shop were either on high tables, or in old gondolas that we guessed still floated: a hand-written sign saying “Fire exit” pointed out the back door, which was one step up from the water. The whole shop must flood every high tide, but the bookseller had managed to keep all of his goods up out of harm’s way. He had quite the collection, mounds and mounds of books stacked and piled, up to the ceiling in some places. There were lots of books in English, some in German, some in French, but most in Italian; there were antique Italian comic books, including Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse; shelves of language dictionaries, food encyclopedias, and picture dictionaries of horse and dog breeds; piles of old books full of plays and operas. Among the disarray I found a tourist’s map of Venice, and some fabulously unique postcards, which I bought (these were not my only purchases of the day- I did manage to find a signature Venetian mask for myself). Using the map we managed to find our way back to the train station in time to catch a train home not far behind the rest of our group, although I think I could’ve stayed until it got dark, still blissfully lost and wandering through those convoluted streets.

Bologna

Our trip to Bologna would have been fairly unremarkable were it not for the fact that we stumbled into the Bologna foods festival pasta rolling contest. We were merely trying to see the castle: although it looked dwarfed next to the cathedral San Petronio (the 5th largest cathedral in the world), we figured we’d explore inside anyway. It was a castle after all. We were not expecting to be swept into a huge crowd, all filing past tables of pastas, cheeses, and Mortadella (what the rest of the world calls Bologna) to crowd around a couple dozen tables being set up for pasta rolling. After wrestling to the show tables for samples from a Mortadella that was larger than my little brother (yes you, Tom), we too crowded around the tables to watch. Each table got 1kg of flour, 8 eggs, a fork, and a scraper. Each contestant brought their own pasta roller, a long, slender rolling pin without handles- these rolling pins are a traditional wedding gift to brides here as well, as it is the woman of the house who must make the pasta (the rollers are also said to be useful for keeping husbands in line). At the starting bell, everyone starts by shaping a base ring of flour: most are careful not to use the whole kilogram, so that they have some for rolling if the dough gets sticky. Then the eggs are cracked into the center of the flour: all but one person uses all 8. They are mixed into the flour slowly, from the center to the outside, so that the wet eggs are held inside walls of flour until it is thick enough to knead. Kneading takes the longest, as the dough must be strong enough to be rolled incredibly thin, and perfectly smooth. The tables are scraped carefully to prevent any clump of dried egg or flour from making it into the finished ball of smooth, yellow dough. Some people let their dough rest for short periods in between kneading- others knead steadily until sweat breaks out on their forehead. Then the rolling begins: this is where real skill is needed, because as the dough gets thinner and larger, it must be rolled up around the rolling pin, rolled out, then unrolled again and again to keep the entire piece the same thickness. Sadly, we had to leave before the winner was announced. It would be almost an hour before everyone finished rolling out, and then each piece must be judged for overall thickness, smoothness, texture, and finally cooked taste and texture. We only had the afternoon, and had to move on and see other things.

Next we went into the Cathedral San Petronio- the mere height of the building was breathtaking. Although the outside was covered in scaffolding for restoration, you could see that the front wall was only half finished, and though the bottom half was beautifully carved stone, the upper half was plain brick. Apparently, the Pope had cut funding to the cathedral halfway through, as soon as he learned that it was to be bigger than St. Peter’s. The restoration was not to finish the top, only to clean and protect what had been finished originally. Inside, the church had a couple defining features. In one of the large side niches, there is a fresco depicting Dante’s Inferno, from beginning to end. The painting is beautifully detailed, but almost comic book-style in its progression through the story. It also includes the prophet Mohammed, as true to the story, and for this reason the church was almost bombed several years ago. The other defining feature is the world’s longest linear sundial, which stretches across the floor from the center of the front door to the back corner of the church, and reveals the time and approximate date with the sunlight that streams in the highest window. I didn’t find the sundial highly impressive until I overheard an English speaking tour guide explaining its unconventionality: the cathedral was built during a time when the Roman Catholic church was still adamantly against the notion that the Earth was not the center of the universe. To include such a sundial, which could only be functional with correct calculations of the Earth’s position and rotation, showed one of the first daring steps forward in the church’s acceptance of science. Bologna, after all, was considered one of the most modern and scientific-minded communities of the time. And perhaps, we mused, the builders of San Petronio had to garner support from the wealthy local community after the Pope cut off official funding.

Catching Up

The time has come for the inevitable post apologizing for not posting. The last week has been so busy I feel like I've fallen too far behind to properly catch up: we've gone from the vacation speed of southern Italy to the harvest-time rush up north. Hence, there will probably be a post about all of last week, then a post about Venice, then by tomorrow evening I'll need another post about the eel festival. In the mean time, I have my photos automatically upload every couple days, and I've started adding captions to them while I can still remember where each one is from. I'm almost glad that we only have three weeks here in Ferrara, because I feel if this kind of schedule were to continue longer, my brain would get overloaded and I'd simply start forgetting all about what I did yesterday just so I could take in what was happening today. Thank goodness Sundays are still really considered a day of rest here, so that everything is closed and the only thing one can do is go for walks and drink caffés and nap in the sun. And, of course, write blog posts.

The Busy World of Richard Scary

I found the busy world of Richard Scary today. I remember reading Richard Scary books when I was little, and staring at the illustrations: the world of Richard Scary was so small. The city was right next to the country, farmers grew every kind of fruit and vegetable in one place, then drove it to the factory that appeared only a block or two away. Everyone rode bikes. Everyone was happy, and smiled and waved to each other. The few cars that were in the pictures were incredibly small and brightly colored. There was always a cat somewhere, and the sky was always blue, and the sun always shown. That was my day today. We toured a rice farm, then a canning factory. The rice farm was exactly what comes to mind for any grain farm: large barns, grain silos, big square farmhouse across the dusty gravel road. The land was perfectly flat for as far as you could see- we are in the carefully drained Po River flood plains, a full 4 meters below sea level, perfect for rice. We toured inside the barns first, and I was surprised to see that they held all the equipment necessary to dry, process, and package the rice. No middlemen needed here- the same five or six people working on the farm do everything from planting to taping up boxes to be sent to supermarkets and restaurants. After the rice is planted, the rice fields are flooded with carefully routed trenches, and the rice grows happily in its shallow swamp. The tractors they use to harvest have very thin, tall tires in front, to squash as little rice as possible, but large caterpillar treads in the back to keep it from getting stuck in the mud. When it comes time to harvest the fields are drained, and directly after the rice is cut, the fields are burned to remove the bulk of the straw (this is fairly safe, as the base of the grass is still wet, and every field is surrounded by water).
As we drove to the canning factory, not even fifteen minutes away, I watched the fields alternate between rice and soy beans, then corn, then carrots, tomatoes, squash, plum trees, and plants I could only guess were peas or beans. Do they grow everything right here? Then a rutabaga truck drove by. Yes, I guess they do.
Our tour of the factory was everything I’d imagined it would be: we all donned white napkin suits and hats with hairnets, and followed the tour guide around through noisy rooms full of conveyor belts, pipes, and hoses. Green beans were the main product being canned that day: we watched them come in from trucks in the back, and followed them through washing, sorting, washing again, being hand-checked and sorted by old ladies in the same napkin suits, stuffed into cans, sealed, pressure cooked, slapped with labels and barcodes, pressed into pallets, plastic-wrapped, and carried by robot forklifts to the enormous, futuristic store room where over 2,000 pallets are sorted, stored, and retrieved by robotic lifts. Try as I might, I could not follow the line of conveyors, elevators, and slides that took the cans from one place to another, and I was nearly left behind by the tour while I stood and marveled at one little device that did nothing but rotate the boxes 90 degrees before letting them transfer to the next slide. Did they hire Rube Goldberg to design this factory? How could these tracks possibly be the best way to get the can from point A to point B? And yet, it obviously worked incredibly well: in the two hours we were there, the factory produced more canned goods than I could imagine eating in a lifetime. Our tour guides, both at the farm and the factory, were incredibly friendly and excited about what they did. They gave us gift bags (only fruit juice from the cannery- I was kind of hoping for green beans), and all stood and waved us goodbye when it was time for our bus to drive us home.

Alla Strozza

Alla Strozza agroturismo has the best kitchen I have ever been in in my entire life. The beautifully modern and shiny kitchen is tucked into a corner of the brick farmhouse, lit by a wide stained-glass window of roses and vines. The smell when I first walked in was the most wonderful aroma I have ever experienced- it made me instantaneously content. If I could only breathe this scent forever, I don’t think I’d ever be unhappy again. It was indescribable- there were notes of fresh popcorn, roasting meat, rosemary, peppercorns, wine, garlic, and something that reminded me of both Thanksgiving and Christmas... And so many other more subtle things I couldn’t place. Maybe it was a case of the whole being more than the sum, or maybe it was the magic of the ingredients (most were from the back yard of the agroturismo), but I never wanted to leave that kitchen.
Unfortunately, the time came to tour the rest of the farm, and to set the table for the magnificent lunch we were soon to have. The farm part of the agroturismo was much more real than the other agroturismo we visited in Otranto. This was food being raised, not a petting zoo for tourists. We saw the hogs, geese, ducks, and chickens; the slaughtering room; and the cool dark curing room, with racks of salame con aglio (with garlic), salame di sugo, and huge hams, hanging by their tendons to dry. They sit for months or years, molding slightly in the cold, until they are hard and salty and savoury and perfect. We got to try some salame with our Coppia Farrarese, as a first course to lunch- the bread was crusty and warm, and the salame was cold and soft. They complemented each other perfectly. The rest of lunch was as good as we expected from what we saw and smelled in the kitchen: fresh pasta with Bolognese sauce, stuffed rabbit loin with white wine, a tasting plate of their pickled and preserved vegetables, and a flat dry cake you ate dipped in wine or with cherry preserves (or both). Erin, who usually declares every day to be the best yet, leaned back in her chair and said “I think this might be the best day of my entire life.”